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Seasons of War Episode 13-See No Evil

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Episode 13: See No Evil

1st of Cassus

Jeremie woke slowly in a cold room, his breathing pained and uneven. The first thing he noticed were the chains that wrapped around his person, and the second was that his spectacles had been removed. His vision was blurry, but as he looked around, he could see familiar shapes belonging to instruments of torture. Jeremie saw a rack, a brazen bull, a chair of torture and stocks, among other things. His chains bound him to the wall--they seemed to originate from the depths of the wall, as they reached out through a hole laminated with iron. Next to him was an iron table, but whatever lay on it was a mystery to him. The only visible item was a steel bar. Jeremie looked above him. Many chains hung loosely from the ceiling, but directly above him was a skylight with bars all but blocking the ominous view of the gallows.

Where was he? Was this the place in his vision? The labyrinthine quarry his foresight had tried to warn him of?

Jeremie tried to stand but the chains rubbed against his chest. He struggled against the bonds for a while but the only thing that came from it was the rattling, reminding him all too well of how isolated he'd become.

The others! The Wise Man remembered his telepathy, and he tried to contact the others. Odd gave no response—either their attackers had killed him, or he was unconscious. Jeremie hoped for the latter. He tried contacting Laura, Yumi and Ulrich with no luck. This felt different—they were not dead nor were they blocking him out but he could not contact them. He then tried Aelita.

Of all his friends Aelita offered the most hope of reestablishing contact. While he could not hear her thoughts like a conversation, he felt her. It was not altogether a pleasant experience, mostly due to the fact that the things he felt were unpleasant. He felt her loneliness, her depression, her emotional scars as well as lingering memories of physical pain. Jeremie could not tell if Aelita could help him however--their communication was cut off, and he did not know if his pleas for help went through to her.

"Sleep well?" A voice asked in the darkness. Jeremie looked up again through the bars to the midnight sky, and then around the ceiling. A woman hung upside down--had she always been there? She had long fair hair, and her skin was white as winter snow. There were many things he noticed about her—her accent seeming several centuries out of date, and her face holding a cracked expression but her most notable feature were her glowing orange eyes, resembling fire.

"Who are you? Why have you brought me here?" Jeremie asked.

The woman flipped around and landed on her feet like an acrobat. "Does it matter who I am? All that matters is that you're still very much alive." She laughed, her voice pulling back and forth between pitches. She examined Jeremie's neck, and then shook her head. "I wonder if you'll survive the turning?"

The turning? That didn't sound altogether pleasant. "I want no part of whatever you have planned! Let me go!"

"Oh, how could I disobey when you say that in such a commanding voice!" The woman mocked him. "Truth be told, milord moonshine, I plan very little in advance. You could avoid a plan or your desire to avoid it could play you into my hands. We shall see what the outcome is."

The woman grabbed the steel bar and heated it over a flame. She weighed it in her hands. "I suppose this is where you expect me to talk or die?" Jeremie asked.

"Or? Those things need not be mutually exclusive, milord moonshine." She struck him with the heated steel, burning his face and causing immense pain. He spit onto the rough stone below him, blood tainting the liquid. He'd bit his cheek. "If you behave you will die. But your likeness will live on in undeath."

Jeremie coughed. She struck him again but he recovered faster the second time. "That isn't much of an ultimatum."

The woman shrugged. "I'm not here to impress you." She cackled. "My kind isn’t known for impressing mortals with plans, you know. It is our power over others that make us impressive." She grinned, revealing her fangs, sharper than the sword that had once been at his side.

This woman was a vampire! "So, what, do you intend to make me a vampire?" Jeremie demanded. "I'm quite happy with a living breathing vessel!"

"I may turn you. But only if I know that you will survive and you cannot serve me better in other ways. Believe me, milord moonshine—your actions to come may damn you. But today that's what you want." She grabbed a dagger from the table. She weighed it in her hands before stabbing Jeremie in the shoulder with it. Through his pained breathing she whispered to him, "Good luck."

She he took a few steps back wearing a malicious grin. She clawed her fingers and closed her fists, disappearing in a cloud of smoke. Now he was alone with his thoughts. Jeremie could only hear the fire crackling next to him; he could not feel its warmth. As the fire began to die, he felt like he was going mad within his own mind, his regrets and isolation slowly eroding his thoughts.

Suddenly he was pulled back against the wall, the back of his head striking the stones. He yelped and then screamed as he learned the wall was retracting its chains, pulling them back into the bowels of wherever they came from. The Wise Man stood, grabbing his arms where the chains had rubbed his skin and folding his arms against his chest. He walked over to the other side of the room and leaned against it as he scanned the area for a door. There didn't seem to be a door until the wall separated, revealing a blinding white light.

Jeremie looked at it for a moment. He moved towards it, spotting his spectacles on the table. He grabbed them, muttering when he saw that they'd been snapped and the glass cracked. He did his best to repair them to a point where he could wear them. Then, he proceeded to walk towards the white light.

Soon the glare faded and Jeremie could see where he was. The hallway where he stood was long and dark, and it reeked of foul blood and death. Jeremie leaned against the wall but pulled away when his fingers touched a cold, thick liquid that had been splattered on the walls. Torches he hadn't seen lit up the hall, and the Wise Man's jaw dropped in horror at what he saw.

Body parts lined the walls, but whole corpses were not present. It was as if he had walked into a demonic butcher shop, legs and chests hanging limply from chains and hooks from the ceiling. Now that he could see the bodies the smell became real, not just some lingering stench. He coughed and pulled his shirt's collar over his nose before proceeding down the dank hallway.

He tried contacting Aelita again, briefly able to experience her fear before the connection shattered like glass. Now his head throbbed, the place where the vampire had hit him sending a pulse through his skull. Jeremie shook his head before he continued.

The hallway forked off, and foolishly Jeremie tried to go down the path with less visible gore. The walls closed in front of him; had he been even a step further down the path it would have crushed him. With a sigh, he turned and walked down the other path.

This path, too, forked, and both seemed equally dreadful. Suddenly Jeremie heard Aelita scream his name. He turned to see someone dragging her down one of the paths. "Aelita! Hold on!" He shouted, sprinting after the man hauling her off. She screamed his name again, but the door slammed in his face, and no matter how he struggled against it, it refused to open. He looked down to the other path, and he could only hope that the dungeon circled.

The Wise Man raced down the hall, ignoring his pounding head and fatigue. He climbed a flight of stairs, coming to the courtyard where executions were carried out. It was fenced in by the dungeon, which stood what looked like three stories high. The morning sun had risen now, casting a hazy glow over everything and painting the sky in pastel colors, contrary to the dark scene below. He froze when he saw who resided there.

Odd's corpse was the closest to him; it was in werewolf form, implying he'd died earlier that night. Odd had been bled dry, his bones rubbed with wolf's bane until they had become brittle and cracked. Jeremie shakily grabbed the note gabbed into Odd's corpse and read it out loud. "Monster,"

Jeremie looked over to a table where he saw a woman with short black hair. He ran to it, turning her over to see her face. It was Yumi, her throat and arms sliced open. She, too, had been labeled, her note all but unreadable from the blood and the sword that had attached it to her gut. "Assassin,"

Behind him, next to a vhenadahl tree, stood the gallows that had hung over his head in the dungeon. A woman's corpse hung limply from it, her body and her long blonde hair swaying ever so slightly in the breeze. Jeremie rushed over to it. Laura's body had been desecrated, cuts placed in her corpse post mortem. The note gabbed into her chest by a wooden stake read "Oppressor."

Jeremie felt misery rise up into his throat, and he fell to his knees. His friends must've come to save him, and all he had caused was their deaths. Monster, assassin, oppressor. Those words he'd thought but never said… Did they die wishing they hadn't come for him?

His mourning was postponed when Aelita shouted for him again, though her voice seemed far away. Jeremie leapt to his feet, and he raced toward a set of stairs leading back into the dungeon. He followed the sounds of her screams, her pleas for mercy. He was more horrified with every scream that created a cacophony inside his head. Jeremie could only fear the worst.

When Jeremie finally discovered her, the man who had abducted her was gone. There was evidence of rape and a struggle. Aelita herself was tied to a stake and committed to the flame. "Aelita!" Jeremie shouted repeatedly, as if saying her name like a prayer would change her situation. The Wise Man found a jug of water and threw it onto the fire, using the dagger the vampire had stabbed him with to cut the rope.

But it was too late. As Jeremie held the badly burned Outcast in his arms, he learned that she had stopped breathing. "AELITA!" Jeremie screamed, pulling her body closer to him. What he would give to change this. "I am so sorry! For sending you away, for accepting Laura's proposal, for calling you names, for everything! I love you! Please, you can't be dead!"

Jeremie cried into her, wishing he lived in a fairy tale where his tears would bring her back to life. He cried for a long time until a familiar voice brought him back. "You ungrateful little shit! You caused all of this to happen!"

The Wise Man looked up to see Ulrich standing over him, anger in his face. The Mercenary drew his katanna and moved as if to strike him, but he stopped when Jeremie flinched. "Even now as she lay dead by your hands you flinch as if to save your own life? Coward."

Jeremie looked up at him. "You cannot believe that I killed her, Ulrich! I would never hurt Aelita!" He screamed desperately.

"Actions speak louder than words, Jeremie. You sent her away with nothing, did not challenge your fiancée when she mocked her, and now here you stand, her corpse in your hands." Ulrich spat. "You will die for what you did to her."

Jeremie dodged Ulrich's blade, and he spotted a sword and shield in the corner. The Wise Man scrambled to collect them, and he prepared for Ulrich's strike. The first strike was easily deflected by the shield, despite the brittle metal. The second scraped his side, and in a panic Jeremie flailed, striking Ulrich with the shield. The Mercenary was staggered, so Jeremie bashed it against him again. In his former friend's pain and state of immobility, he stabbed Ulrich in the gut.

For a moment it was only the death of an enemy, but then he remembered that he and Ulrich had been friends. Panicked, Jeremie walked back, dropping the sword and shield. Ulrich looked to the hole in his gut, rubbing his insides before falling dead to the floor. "Ulrich! I'm so sorry!" Jeremie shouted, shaking his friend as if it would wake him.

"Well done. Well done indeed." The vampire clapped slowly, appearing slowly behind the Wise Man. Jeremie was so angry with her; he couldn't bring himself to turn around. "You made it here in one piece. Not everyone does."

"My friends are dead. It's my fault." Jeremie lamented.

"You don't need them. They were weak. You are strong." The vampire said. "And they were mortal. You will be young forever."

"I don't want this! I would rather die than be a leech!" He shouted.

"You will change your mind, I know it." The vampire said.

Jeremie shook his head. "No, I won't. Just kill me and be done with it."

The vampire sighed, and she struck the back of Jeremie's skull, knocking him unconscious. She flipped him over and held her ear to his heart. "Still alive, but I can remedy that." She dragged him out of the room, her tests concluded. The illusions faded away behind her.

---

Jeremie woke several hours later back in the room he'd woken the first time. This time, however, he was tied to the table and his neck burned. The woman stood with her back to him, examining a mirror. A shadow twisted inside it briefly before it faded. She turned and walked closer to him, examining him carefully. His blue eyes were speckled with red and orange as her venom flowed through his veins. The vampire smiled and used a knife to mark his face for easy identification should he run later. She cut a mark from the left side of his mouth over a few centimeters, and then his left cheekbone. "You're mine now, pet. Now and forever."

And like a pet she collared him, reveling in every glare he sent her way. Jeremie finally turned his head away, and he mourned for the death of his friends. He felt a strange feeling in his chest, like someone was trying to comfort him. In his mind he saw the expansive desert, but it faded quickly. What had he seen? What could it possibly mean?
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